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Feb 28 2019

# London Grip New Poetry – Spring 2019

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This issue of London Grip New Poetry features:

* Angela Kirby *Kerrin P Sharpe *Jim C Wilson *Miki Byrne *Lisa Reily *Nancy Mattson
* Joan Byrne *Rosemary Norman *M E Muir *Melanie Branton * Stuart Pickford
*Amelia Hickman *Mark Carson *Wendy Klein *D S Maolalai *Jakky Bankong-Obi
*Antony Johae *Tristan Moss * Norbert Hirschhorn * Jock Stein * Keith Nunes
* Thomas Tyrrell *Teoti Jardine * Jeri Onitskansky * E A M Harris * Christopher Georgiou
*Stephen Bone *Pamela Job *Bruce Barnes *Josh Ekroy *Ian C Smith

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be found at
LG new poetry Spring 2019

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Our submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October

Editor’s notes

We have put the EU flag at our masthead for a second time as we prepare this posting of new poetry for the first of March 2019 when we may be on the verge of Brexit. Or not. Either way, this issue includes a couple of poems which touch upon the matter which has dominated British politics for around three years.

But is it fanciful to think that quite a few of the other poems display an undercurrent of anxiety caused by (even if not explicitly attributed to) Brexit? Probably it is fanciful – not least because many of our contributors come from outside the British Isles and may well have other matters which concern them. Furthermore the richness of the human spirit is such that we are rarely so obsessed with any one thing that we cannot divert ourselves by dwelling on something else.

Poetry gives us a lens through which to look at all aspects of this complex world – and it also provides the blank sheet of paper which, like a photographic plate, allows us to record what we see, while adjusting the framing, the focus and the depth of field. This stream-of-consciousness, off-the-cuff metaphor has rather taken your editor by surprise. But it is nonetheless rather apt because it chimes with an interestingly varied group of camera poems which await the reader towards the end of this issue.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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    Angela Kirby: A Present from Wales

    Our first holiday, we took the train to Holyhead, then
    the little train. Did I dream the woman falling through that
    half open window, her blood across the pane? Don’t look,
    my mother said, and turned my face away into her lap.

    New luggage hung over us in brown nets, above sepia
    photographs of Morecambe, Rhyll, Llandudno, Colwyn Bay.
    We swung along the coast on single track, the long dreamed
    of sea a silver edge to our horizon, unbearably far away.

    In sheltered harbourage, the evening lay calm, dinghies
    and fishing boats adrift at slack tide anchorage, slap slap
    amongst the gulls, a black line of bladderwrack strung out
    along the shore marked tomorrow’s limit to my bravery.

    That night the dying light fell through the blue check curtains
    of my room, set pinpoints of light on the wall’s well charted
    geography. I launched myself on a waterway of dreams,
    impatient for landfall on the brink of morning.

    Outside the sea sucked in its breath, then sighing breathed
    again and whispering, threw itself against the land. I dipped
    my hand in clear water and woke to find the day at my feet,
    the sun swimming free between the white flecked shoals

    of my sky high hopes and the neat starfish in mirror pools.
    The week unwrapped itself before us, spilling shells, winkles,
    shrimps, a lucky dip of pebbles, into our waiting pails.
    I have some here on my window sill, A Present from Wales.

    And still in dreams I see the woman fall, and still the blood
    streams down across the glass, across the rubble and my brother’s
    back where the long wounds crawl. Along the bay, seaweed
    lies red upon the sand. It is not easy to throw souvenirs away.

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    Kerrin P Sharpe: she falls like no-one's there

    a sudden rickety step
              turns her heel
    she crashes against
              a brick wall

    as sudden as crows
              a curate appears
    his cassock
              a novena of buttons

    his biretta
              dark as a church porch
    his Latin litany
              free falling
    calling the old saints

    and before
              the sirens
    gush of gulls
              clots of rain

    and before
              the undertaker lights
    four angel candles
              in his South Street window

    or dusts
              that willow casket
    the curate
              anoints her

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    Jim C Wilson: The Gospel Truth

    I went to a cathedral, the other day,
    to hear a requiem. How was I to know
    there would be a collection? Someone
    put the velvet bag, smelling of old hymns,
    into my hands and I, staring at stone,
    passed it on to stranger. Should I
    have offered up some bits of silver,
    if only for appearance? I was still
    in doubt when the verger threw open
    a side door and let the cold
    December wind enter the building
    and my heart. But then I only
    entered in to hear a requiem,
    among the flickering candles.

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    Miki Byrne: Before

    I brush your lapels.
    You stand in your dark suit.
    The one you only wear
    for two occasions and duty
    sits on your shoulder.
    A clean shirt, a hardly-seen tie
    and money for the collection plate
    ready in a pocket.
    You will stand, silent, respectful.
    Keep your back straight,
    shoulders back.
    Won’t allow a tear
    and will whisper The Lord’s Prayer
    with them all.
    You know the ritual, even gain
    something from it.
    I hope it is cathartic and that
    saying goodbye eases your heart.
    In the depths of your quiet dignity,
    only I know you are in pain.

    Miki Byrne: Man in the Entry

    My neighbour: rheumy eyed, shabby,
    dustily fragrant.
    Dips into my bin.
    Takes paper rubbish and twists it
    through chain-link that edges
    the back entry.
    Pushes each piece half-way
    to hang through the fence
    like a blossoming bow tie.
    I stand intrigued, as print, cardboard,
    colour and ink grow like abstract art.
    He adds, adjusts, covers metres.
    Pushes and twists with grubby
    arthritic fingers.
    I think of dementia, frailties, as I watch
    the creation of this urban installation.
    Eye to a knot hole, I am uncomfortable
    in my voyeurism.
    He picks and places, tears and stuffs,
    obsessed and silent.
    I am concerned about the cold, his age.
    Wonder if I should call somebody.

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    Lisa Reily: a quiet neighbour

    we are disappearing;
    even the leftover soap we take to spare the world
    our waste,
    the last trace of us erased.
    sometimes we both don’t sleep on our last night,
    as if we are moving for the first time,
    excited holidaymakers;
    but we are used to leaving, shifting,
    only to start up, to make home, again.
    there is something clean in carrying the same two bags,
    finding our way around a town,
    the cheapest groceries, where to get a haircut;
    how to say good morning in a foreign tongue,
    to eat and drink a village, adopt new tastes,
    and learn to love them.
    we cannot find our home—we thought we would—
    the yin and yang of staying;
    a quiet neighbour becomes a building site,
    restaurant music in May, the blare of a nightclub in August,
    the stray dog we love turns into a pack that howls,
    keeps us awake at night.
    and so we begin a new cycle of love and annoyance,
    knowing we’ll never have to settle
    for any of it.

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    Nancy Mattson: Woman as island

    Creatures of erosion have kneaded these stones
    into loaves flat enough for her to pierce
    with a hand drill, string them together
    on old rope to make a wreath
    for the door she’s painted with tar

    Her children are spirals of reclaimed wire
    their feet stuck in pebble beds
    their scarves knitted with Chorda filum
    bootlaces of dead men
    dried by salt and wind

    She feeds herself on mackerel
    smoked in a blackened hut
    over shavings of scrub oak and pine
    waits for the March ferry to arrive

    Nancy Mattson: A wife’s lament

    My bread never rises
    although I knead it with fists
    and the heels of my hands
    until it is round as a stone

    My dishes are never clean
    although I wash them
    with my underwear
    and rinse them in cold water

    My clothes never fit me
    although I steal them
    from the overstuffed boudoir
    of my husband’s mistress

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    Joan Byrne: Hyacinth blues

    I dismissed the children
    snapped-shut the laptop
    switched off the news
    silenced my lover
    and listened

    to the hyacinth

    its blueness unsheathing
    from a pot on my table

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    Rosemary Norman: Striped

    The artist’s t-shirt is striped
    with the stripe of a child
    playing on a beach or a sailor
    drowning. It’s high visibility,

    striped, dresses the child
    to ward off the future,
    drowning and high visibility
    hazard. Or, something subtler,

    seen to warn of the future
    stripes get the blame for
    hazard or something. Subtler
    than good and evil, more’s

    the blame on artists’ stripes
    for all the doubt forbidden
    in good-and-evil wars
    of absolute stripe. You flags

    of no doubt, forbidding
    light, even, its play on colour,
    your absolute over-stripe
    stripes flags on artists’ t-shirts.

    Rosemary Norman: Blasphemy

    is the name I heard
    given in conversation  –
    by a Catholic
    believer but no matter –
    to the 1980 shooting
    of Archbishop Oscar Romero
    serving mass (whereas
    36 years on, Fr Jacques Hamel
    is “beheaded” –  clumsy job
    compare Becket,
    1170, disembrained).

    And I want the word
    rethought for the sake
    of all of us to include
    driving without due care, also
    the dropping of gum
    in the street –
    who knows what angel
    might find its foot adhere
    at every step
    to pavements cracked already,
    that now  resist mending?

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    M E Muir: Transformation

    There's a new piazza outside South Ken tube
    where the guy in a khaki hat plays sad guitar
    over the blots of bird-grey gum that stick on her tired shoes
    and carry her depression into the high arcade
    as she smoothes grey hair with tentative mottled hands.

    On the anarchic staircase
    she finds the comfort of a wooden handrail
    fights down that crowd-dark warzone
    No Entry – Rightside – Leftside –
    tries to locate her magic Freedom Pass.

    At the automated barriers, her pockets shout stress
    till the wide gate for problem seniors opens at last
    and shaky elbows push through the roundabout of crowds
    the kids in line with high-viz teachers
    losing it for the dinosaurs.

    But hang on tight and make the final stretch
    down eight more pockmarked steps to platform one
    where sudden startling daylight
    sun-scattered blitz bounces its brilliance
    over high signage to call her
    past the yellow-banded sand bins
    and plane trees lined with singing golden leaves.

    Her buddleia opens purple on the high brick wall
    and guides her so she finds her seat
    under the soaring sycamore
    where she will spend her afternoon
     tranformed to the beauty she always wears
    in the sunshine at the end of platform one
    on South Kensington Underground station.

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    Melanie Branton: Daylight Saving

    My clock is still on British Summertime,
    one of many things I can’t be arsed to change, ticked off
    ahead of me into a future
    where my train is already pulling out,
    dawn already broken,
    while I’m lying here in the dark.

    I have put myself back,
    turned my hands widdershins,
    pointed in the direction of the past,
    forged myself a lump of dead time to eke out the day,
    pulled the night down, like a shutter,
    at five o’clock.

    In six months, I’ll catch my clock up,
    follow its luminous green fingers out of this hole,
    rise again, chivvied by its tick-tock harping
    on a spring I can’t see. Until then,
    I’ll remind myself I always have
    less than it says.

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    Stuart Pickford: Thomas Lux, I’m Dying

    I mount them on nice paper
    and print your name, Lux,
    like the soap flakes of childhood.
    From a blue box, I could sprinkle
    winter onto the lake of the twin tub.

    I wanted to copy your Refrigerator,
    1957, those maraschino cherries
    still beside a sulky chicken
    but when they grew erotic,
    strippers at a church social…

    Instead, I print for the class
    the one about the mower man
    who’d mow snow, who mowed
    the baseball and chucked it back
    as coleslaw. I liked that.

    Strange it should come to me
    today that mowing a quarter-acre
    to dust would be the last poem
    I photocopy for my class
    for the hell of it. After years,

    the filing cabinets are stuffed.
    Alphabetical order ran out
    years ago. On my exercise books—
    still unmarked—sits a plant
    with crinkly ginger hair.

    Hibernating, I tell my class.
    Silence. Repeat till funny,
    I tell them. Lovely plumage,
    I tell myself. And so the poem
    is written. Spider Plant 2018

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    Amelia Hickman: Sonata

    He walks the woods
    arms wave, music
    runs in his mind’s ear
    thunderstorms
    still his soul
    muss es sein?

    Dissonance here
    after, sublime
    consonance of melody
    delicate triplets
    fate resigns him
    to silence
    es muss sein.

    Eyes defiant,
    wild silver hair
    ich muss sein

    all that is left is the
    moon.

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    Mark Carson: Bach’s Clavichord

    Bach curls up,
    hunches over the little keyboard,
    thick thumbs
    pressing into the pitch,
    hearing not notes played
    but notes conceived;
    feeling the shape
    of each key signature
    in the shifting sequence
    of his crabbing hand.

    The room is cosy, firelit,
    curtains heavy in the storm,
    but soon he’ll rise,
    cross to the church
    climb to the loft
    and when the leaky bellows
    wheezes into life,
    endure the howling wolf-notes
    grind his teeth,
    his aching teeth,
    in flat-infested keys.

    Grant me the temperament
    he cries demented
    to his tone-deaf god,
    but god is humming along,
    shifts into a remote minor
    without a comma’s glitch
    and twists the devil’s tune
    by tonal transubstantiation,
    foul temper’d tinnitus
    in faustian compact.

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    Wendy Klein: airbnb
    Al Haouz

    the mechanical owl
    by the clothes rack
    a child’s toy
    but vigilant
    the broken locks
    on the bathroom doors
    the bangles by the basin
    the hesitant moan in the pipes
    in the same key
    as a discarded lover
    calling out her name
    which makes her turn
    off the tap
    the better to hear
    before she realises
    each time
    that he’s elsewhere
    that his voice
    comes from deep
    inside the plumbing
    in some other city
    some other life
    some other airbnb

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    D S Maolalai: All the space you've got.

    its a pretty small apartment
    and even then
    there are fewer parts
    I use.  the sofa
    is pure ornament
    or else
    reserved for parties
    and, of the two chairs at my table,
    why do I only ever sit
    at one?  I come in after work
    and straight away
    it's either that or my bed.
    everywhere else
    is just a place to drop my coat
    and pile up the things
    that I just put down for a moment.
    last time I sat there
    I think I had a girl on my knees.
    or maybe it was when Jack came by.
    he tends to take the chair I like
    and I feel strange sitting on the bed
    when friends are over.
    we were going through
    his thesis, I think?
    and I was pointing out mistakes. only language,
    obviously.
    I don't know anything about architecture.
    but I can spot a clumsy phrase
    (dear editor, let me know if this is wrong).
    anyway
    point is
    it's not hard
    to be better at writing
    than an architect
    but it's difficult
    to use all the space you've got
    the way you are supposed to. still
    I sit where I sit
    and enjoy my evenings.  this chair catches the radio just right
    and you can see from here to the window.
    not much of a view,
    of course.
    just bare yard out there
    but again
    things like that
    are only problems
    for architects.

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    Jakky Bankong-Obi: Muse

    Let me be your muse,
    So you can practice
    The mastery of your artistry
    On my heart.
    Like Rumi wrote poems
    And Akbar wove his carpets
    I want to be the art
    You devote a lifetime to

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    Antony Johae: At Byblos Bank
    (from Lines on Lebanon)

    After parking, glass confronts us,
    my wife, my daughter and I.
    It fills a space – the entrance.
    A part could be window
    another – door. I look for a crack
    that might show an opening,
    put out my palm to push
    and the glass slides open.

    My wife swipes the dispenser.
    No number comes out.
    She swipes again – the same.
    A guard fingers downwards
    – this dispenser’s not a cell phone game –
    presses on the button
    and a slip slides out.

    Waiting stools look like boxes in a row,
    some padded, others glass-topped.
    Wife and daughter sit.
    I make to be between them.
    They laugh, for this is no seat
    but a square glass table-top.

    Byblos seems so ancient,
    first words formed by Phoenicians
    letters incised with stylus
    foundation for further enterprise.
    This bank’s constructed to surprise
    doesn’t have a human touch
    symmetry, scale, sense – all out of the window
    or could it be the door?

    I feel my number’s up
    I can be dispensed with.
    Plato’s table may be a chair
    or vice versa.
    I might as well be standing on my head,
    everything’s up in the air.

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    Tristan Moss: Doxa

    Crawling
    on the rectangular plane,
    seeming to believe transparency
    must give way, a wasp does not stray
    across the four-inch plastic frame,
    to where an open window waits.

    Tristan Moss: Choice

    We’re like those crows
    on the fallow field
    taking flight just after
    the cracking of a gun –
    all but one reacting
    for no point at all.

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    Norbert Hirschhorn: One Thousand And One Nights

    Go on your way and be comforted,
    	Child of the Faithful.
    He who has moulded the world in His hands
    Holds it and us in His hands forever.
    What He has written cannot be altered,
    What He has not written, never shall be.
    So go on your way and be comforted,
    	Child of the Faithful.*

    Misery without dying, the toll we pay
    to live, the obols we store.
    What more to say?
    Go on your way and be comforted.

    Inside each brain, a singular universe:
    Cornell boxes filled with bric-a-brac
    [ace of spades, anemones, desiccated butterflies] by
    He who has moulded the world in His hands.

    So little time, how dare we waste?
    But waste is what we do best
    just to stay alive; our lives mere toys –
    He holds them and us in His hands forever.

    Who is this ‘He’ and by what right
    to give and take a plangent world
    to waste then withdraw as if
    What he has written cannot be altered?

    It seems so. Everything we do
    contingent on every instant passing.
    Free will? To grind your teeth!
    What he has not written, never shall be.

    When someone shuts my final hours,
    when my neural circuits go down,
    I’ll be a black mirror known to none.
    So, go on your way, and be comforted,
    	Child of the Faithful.

    *From The Arabian Nights. An Anthology – edited by Wen-Chin Ouyang.
    New York: Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

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    Jock Stein: Postmarked
    Psalm 15

    Innocently she smiles, placing
    two envelopes in my hand.
    She will walk down the road,
    busy with bills and brochures,

    her daily postal business.
    I am just opening metaphors
    for holy man and hypocrite,
    worried that they use one typeface.

    Two letters in the same post,
    one for me, one for my shadow,
    speaking of money, promises,
    gossip, neighbours, friends.

    Soon I shall walk down the road,
    hoping my holy smile reaches
    two corners of my mouth,
    and holds my face together.

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***

    Keith Nunes: Swimming with the lukewarm

    When living in a pool of tepid invariables
    Death is abstract
    Hunger
    Suffering
    Remain in print
    Are at – yes – arm’s length
    Whisked away on turning pages

    Flesh is soft
    Milky
                              Arteries are hardening

    Words are whimsical
    Serious only when there’s a hint of broken rules
    Relating to dog walks
    And dessert

    One is well dressed when dying
    The grave is sculpted

    Scandal is buried too
    Unearthed only by drunken uncles
    And sullen teenagers

    There is no spectrum
    No opposite ends

    All swim at the shallow end
    Where the water is warm

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***

    Thomas Tyrrell: Breaking Up With The Bookshelves

    My last ex-girlfriend’s books were maddening,
         A skew-whiff row of paperbacks
         Propped up like drunks. My fingers itched
    To re-arrange them every time I went.
         Before that, something casual,
         Five set texts and a snow-globe: not
    A love that lasted. Then I met Francesca
         Whose three IKEA Billy shelves
         Were crammed with classic fantasy
    And science-fiction novels – everything
         A passionate reader could desire.
         Perceiving my admiring looks,
    Francesca introduced me to her loves
         And let me share them. Thus I spent
         My wilder nights and lazy mornings,
    And to this day, though many years have passed
         Since I was exiled and shut out
         From that particular paradise,
    A bright dustcover on a library shelf,
         Like dancing or tomato plants,
         Will bring her instantly to mind,
    Filling me with the old half-welcome ache
         I feel for any well-told tale
         That doesn’t have a happy end.

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    Teoti Jardine: Day Three Of My Writing Regime

    Day three, here I am with my Scribble Book, and pen in hand.

         You’re anaesthetised. Vital signs displayed on O.R. monitors.

    It does feel like a gift to have the time and space to do this.

         Scalpels, clamps, here’s the cancer, there is the vertebrae.

    The Presbyterian work ethic niggles, ‘Shouldn’t you be doing… ‘

         Yes, vital signs all good. Who chose this music? Good thing he can’t hear it.

    I’ve done this before.   Arthur gave me Bertrand Russell’s On Being Lazy.
                                                                                                    I’ll find that place again.

         Most of the malignant tissue gone. Now to secure these three,
                                                                                                    no four, vertebrae.

    This is my time and it’s not shirking. It’s fucking hard work, and I love it.

         Okay Evan old son, our job is done. The rest is up to Oncology and you.

    And knowing you my friend you’ll do it well.

    And I’ll keep writing something every day.

    Teoti Jardine: There Is A Time

    There is a time to do
    and once its done is when I Know
    that was its time.

    I wouldn’t mind knowing that
    a little sooner in order
    to prepare.

    Would preparation take the
    satisfaction off that affirmation?
    I’ll never know

    for I am not a planner.
    I do and once it’s done, its time’s its time
    even if it isn’t.

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    Jeri Onitskansky: Nets

    Some kids are scooping up
    kittens in fishing nets
    near the old fort and others
    are out on the pier
    lowering their nets into the sea
    and up on the mountain
    we watch hippy kids
    capturing a twin-spot fritillary
    while I wave my own net
    through the air, catching
    some precious things but mainly
    the day slips through
    as hard as I try with all my
    senses living it furiously,
    still it passes and what remains
    are the few things I’ve caught
    which is never the same
    as the day itself.

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    E A M Harris: The Wanderer Returns

    This is my road, my way home,
    pearly gold in the early sun.

    In the early sun I approach the places
    where rich people live in fine houses;

    houses growing among the sleek, plump-cattled meadows.
    The verges where we rode our portly ponies

    – ponies polished and coutured – still possess
    wild flowers and golden grass whose scents

    – a world of perfume – I never tried
    to name and, those days, took for granted.

    I took for granted the gates of good wood
    and firm fences, tended, nurtured, painted.

    Painted each season by home-dwelling men,
    like the farmer in our village who spent

    his money on a fine house; spent
    his golden winters trimming hedges.

    But some, like me, rub the perfume
    on their shoulders, inhale
    richness from the soil to their lungs’ brim,
    then jet it with them round the world.

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    Christopher Georgiou: Ghosts

    The way that I remember that last day
    In Rome with you is that it rained.
    And that your hair was wet. And that
    we clung together by the Spanish Steps,
    and wept whilst smiling tourists posed
    for photographs.

    We and our love have gone, moved on
    to separate lives and other places.
    But still I feel that somewhere in the
    background of somebody’s photo memories,
    we and our love live on,
    caught totally absorbed
    in permanent embrace.
    Anonymous as ghosts.

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    Stephen Bone: Jane Avril

    When the hourglass was held up
    to be the ideal, she went against
    the grain. Cane thin and flexible,
    she'd whip herself into a frenzy,
    as if Saint Vitus had devised her dance,
    then melt to a languid ripple.

    Nicknamed La Melinite
    in the halls, away from them: reserved,
    soft voiced. The wounds of her past
    kept hidden, until glimpsed by Lautrec,
    seeping through her deadpan face.

    Jane Avril (1868-1943) was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge

    Stephen Bone: Cleo de Merode

    The world flocked to see her, wanted
    living proof the vision captured by Nadar

    was made of flesh and blood. Women envied
    the heavy fall of hair, Meissen white skin,

    copied every trend she set, soaked up rumours
    of a liaison with the Belgian king.

    A mortal goddess, mind like a ringing till,
    she cashed in, lived the high life in Biarritz

    until age tracked her her down, dyed her grey,
    brought her finally to Pere Lachaise

    to share her mother's tomb, where across
    pink granite, looks and youth returned,

    she holds to perfection, her stone-still pose.

    Cleo de Merode (1875-1966) was a dancer and model of the Belle Epoque

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    Pamela Job: My Father’s Hand in Mine

    I meet you nowadays in a sepia snap stuck down
    on a page. You’re at army training camp. Your hands
    have strayed from your side, or from your khaki lap -

    and your touch reaches me from that rough age
    where men hid from one another - but you were bold
    it’s there to see, your hands rest casually

    on a fellow’s shoulders, one row down;
    and in another photo, you’re an officer in France,
    yours the swagger-stick arm linked through another’s;

    and you both smile, though one behind you frowns.
    This was later in the war, you’d already fought
    Johnny Foreigner in the cul de guerre of Salonika -

    where, once, maybe, it got too much - the flies,
    the stench, the sun - your fingers slipped
    on the trigger of your gun. You shot a bullet

    through your foot. I found the record of all that filed
    in a never-opened box at Kew. Nineteen sixteen, you’re
    in line to be wounded at Arras, the Second Battle;

    I’ve seen caves there, beneath the Mairie where I looked
    for your face, for your hand waving at me, in the flicker-film
    of troops on limestone screens; I have searched for you.

    And now I wear your ring, its diamond eye winks back
    on my same-sized finger; and my hand is held in its net
    of skin, freckled as a trout’s, just as I remember yours.

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    Bruce Barnes: Cameras 1918

    (for Frederick William Ralph)

    The War had taken the edge off his vision;
    snapshots forbidden, the handy Kodak tempted
    from the depths of his kit bag, but the thought
    of time in the slammer worked like a lens cap.
    He couldn’t see for looking.

    On Snettisham Beach, there’s light and space,
    and his quirkiness is back:  the family are bottoms up
    cockling, no time for upright faces to engage.
     Annie keeps a dignity of sorts crouching beneath,
     a straw boater, as her team of canvas hats burrow.

    There’s plenty in the Brownie for a second shot,
    but the mudflats give a dull squidgy foreground;
    he rewinds to cumbersome  glass plates,
    a sense of occasion back then, with marooned
    villagers gathering themselves for a postcard view,

    or those pictures of the Sandringham Estate,
    its gardens and the House, with saloon, dining room
    and the Queen’s Boudoir, their excess posted
    through letterboxes.  He recalls a royal group,
    the protocol of how they were to be arrayed.

    A splatter catches the lens,
    smearing the viewfinder where a friend’s  face,
    staring eyed, is lost to mud.  He shakes his head,
    eyes meeting the glare of tidal pools; that light
    slips the camera catch, erasing the shot he minded.

    The Victorian/Edwardian Ralph family, father and two sons, were all photographers based in Norfolk.

    Both the father and oldest son were known as Frederick, and the father was responsible for many Royal

    portraits including those in the National Portrait Gallery collection.  The family photo referred to in the

    poem does not however contain any regal personages!

    Bruce Barnes:  ‘Indian Summer’
    ‘ – such weather was more pronounced in the lands formerly occupied
    by the American Indians’   Brewer’s Phrase and fable

    Robbed of their season, but still they gloat
    at the drift of leaves, crunching them bonelike
    underfoot, crumbling the reds and browns
    into a shouting vivid history.  Late autumn goes on,
    the telltale light tensing like a bow strung
    with vapour trails, and with clouds that struggle
    to know themselves. One of the group, weather smelling
    and streaked with warpaint, presses his face
    against the day’s glass, says: ‘We must take it back’.

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    Josh Ekroy: another decision is needed

    and it will utterly invalidate the previous one
    so those who yearned to fly to the moon will
    accept the reversal of the previous decision
    with humility or fade far away and utterly forsake
    their lunar ambitions and their wildest fantasies
    will stand naked and forlorn in the unforgiving light
    of day and so they will disband smiling ruefully
    as they go about their earthbound business
    sadly shaking their heads at their own folly
    and our space crew who have done nothing
    but squabble among themselves about the best
    way to power our fragile little rocket to the moon
    will suddenly forget their differences and fall
    on one another's necks and on their knees
    will supplicate the moon for forgiveness
    which will be graciously granted in full
    and a new era of harmony and prosperity
    shall come and we shall be at ease
    with ourselves once more although perhaps
    there may still be one or two who come from
    the planet xarg who must be put on a space
    vehicle back to their home taking their poison
    with them and moreover there may be some
    with the fatal effects still in their brains
    but let us not be anxious on that account
    for we will have developed an earth-serum
    with which these xarq-poisoned ones
    can be injected and which will course through
    their veins returning them to their right minds
    as it neutralises their toxins and extrudes
    the vicious effluents that have infected them

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    Ian C Smith: Out of the Asylum

    Wearing oddments of clothing like cries for help at this mingling of the sexes, medicated, made-up, hair
    slicked, awkward in groups or standing alone, ghosts trying to attend to courtesies forgotten aided by valiant
    staff, these forsaken souls’ efforts highlighted their plight.  I say ‘their’, can’t bear ‘our’.

    One’s legs were amputated after sliding off his bike on a bend.  His painkillers become addiction, we were now
    round the bend, his description of asylum life.  No dance for him other than the one he led me on wheeling
     around the snooker table at speed, smashing balls into pockets, furious.

    Football, a loved skill of battered boyhood before desperate sadness stuck me fast, might have boosted self-
    esteem, so few lining up for the recreational match, lethargic legs like drunken sailors’, so much space, players
    spaced out, you could say, the retention of an oh so black humour a survival tactic.

    Stardom stymied by the organising staff member, the only one in full playing kit, charity spent, and medication’s

    effect on fitness, that dance convinced me, at twenty-three, life was redeemable from the pathos of The Tennessee

    Waltz’s maudlin strains at midnight when we all shuffled back to the wards.

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Contributors’ biographical notes

Jakky Bankong-Obi is a Media Consultant with several years of experience in Human Resources, Publishing and Development. Jakky lives in Abuja, Nigeria, where she enjoys going on long walks, doing yoga and dabbling in Nature Photography.

Bruce Barnes, formerly of Finsbury Park N4, but now escaped to Bradford, West Yorkshire, has recently had poems in the Yorkshire magazine Strix and Pennine Platform. The pamphlet Israel-Palestine was published by the Otley Word Feast Press in 2016, and a collaboration with the artist Jun Shirasu, (an interpretation of the poems of the Japanese socialist poet, Kosuke Shirasu 1905-1943), Out of his struggles was published by the Utistugu Press in 2016.

Stephen Bone‘s work has appeared in various magazines in the U.K. and U.S. A first collection, In The Cinema ( Playdead Press 2014) was followed by a pamphlet, Plainsong, ( Indigo Dreams 2018).

Melanie Branton took up writing poetry in her forties, while caring for elderly parents. She now teaches part-time at an FE college in Somerset and works part-time as a spoken word artist. She has published two collections, Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017) and her work has appeared in journals including Bare Fiction, The Frogmore Papers and Atrium.

Joan Byrne was longlisted for Indigo Dream’s First Pamphlet competition, 2018; and won third prize in South Bank Poetry’s competition, judged by Mimi Khalvati, 2017. She was Poetry Shed’s Featured Poet, 2016 and was nominated by StepAway Magazine for the Pushcart Prize, 2014. Additionally she has been published by The North, New River Press, Eye Flash Poetry, Obsessed With Pipework, Orbis, Early Works Press and Ink Sweat & Tears. She performs regularly with Rye Poets, a trio of poets.

Miki Byrne has had two poetry collections and a pamphlet published, plus over 500 poems included in poetry magazines/anthologies. She was a finalist for Gloucestershire’s Poet Laureate and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize. She has read on TV and on Radio many times. She also ran a poetry writing group at The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury. Miki is disabled and now lives near Tewkesbury. Gloucestershire.UK.

Mark Carson built an innovative clavichord in the 1970s, the only keyboard instrument with finger-tip control of pitch. He’s been intrigued by the conundrum of musical temperament ever since. His pamphlet Hove-to is a State of Mind is available from Wayleave Press.

Josh Ekroy’s collection, Ways To Build A Roadblock is published by Nine Arches Press.

E. A. M. Harris has been writing for some years and several of her poems and flash stories have appeared in print and online magazines and anthologies. She blogs at http://eamharris.com/and tweets as E A M Harris @Eah1E.

Amelia Hickman is a New Zealander currently living in London. She has a background in music, classics and literature. She is a mother of two small children and writes in the evenings, once the house is quiet.

Norbert Hirschhorn is an international public health physician, an American settled in the UK, and proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. He has published five collections of poetry. See www.bertzpoet.com.

Teoti Jardine is Maori, Irish and Scottish. His tribal affiliations: Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu. He attended the Hagley Writers School in 2011. His poetry has been published in the Christchurch Press, London Grip, Te Karaka, Ora Nui, Catalyst, JAAM and Aotearotica Vol 3. He has had short stories in Flash Frontier and was guest Editor for Pasifika Issue Flash Frontier March 2018. He and his dog Amie live in Riverton on the beautiful southern coast of New Zealand.

Pamela Job’s most recent awards are Second Prize in the Magma Poetry Competition 2017/18 and First prize in the Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Competition, 2018, where she also had two poems longlisted. Previously she has twice been winner of the Suffolk Crabbe Memorial Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in several publications including The Interpreter’s House, South Bank Poetry, and Acumen. She has been involved in a four year poetry project connected with the Wilfred Owen House in Northern France, for which she co-produced two anthologies of new poetry. A poem from one of these anthologies, ‘The Parcel’, forms part of a cantata by Tom Randle to be given its first performance at Snape Maltings in April

Antony Johae is a retired academic and divides his time between Lebanon and the UK. In 2015, he came out with Poems of the East. Poetry Salzburg will publish his After-Images: Homage to Éric Rohmer in 2019. Lines on Lebanon is in progress.

Angela Kirby was born in rural Lancashire, has also lived in France and spend time in Spain and the USA. She now lives in London. Her widely published poems have been translated into Romanian and won several prizes and commendations including BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year twice. Her 5th collection comes out in 2019

US-born Wendy Klein has three published collections: Cuba in the Blood (2009) and Anything in Turquoise (2013) from Cinnamon Press and Mood Indigo’(2017) from Oversteps Books. She is working on a pamphlet about her great-grandfather, a Confederate soldier in the US Civil War, a painfully slow process, given intensive grand-parenting.

D S Maolalai is a poet from Ireland who has been writing and publishing poetry for almost 10 years. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press, and he has a second collection forthcoming from Turas Press in 2019. He has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize.

Nancy Mattson’s fourth full collection is Vision on Platform 2 (Shoestring 2018). Previous collections are Finns and Amazons (2012), Writing with Mercury (2006) and Maria Breaks Her Silence (1989). She moved from the Canadian prairies to London in 1990 and co-organises Poetry in the Crypt at St Mary Islington.

Tristan Moss lives in York with his partner and two young children. He has recently had poems published in The Poetry Shed, Antiphon, Snakeskin, Amaryllis, Lighten Up Online, Open Mouse, Picaroon Poetry and Algebra of Owls.

M E Muir is a Scot living in London, former teacher and business consultant, who has always written poetry but only recently begun to join workshops and have some published.

Rosemary Norman was born in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. Shoestring Press published her third collection, For example, in 2016. With video artist Stuart Pound, she makes films with poems as image, soundtrack and sometimes both. See them on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/user22959458

Keith Nunes lives in tiny Pahiatua, New Zealand. He won the 2017 Flash Frontier Short Fiction Writing Award, has had poetry, haiku and short fiction published around the globe while his Foto-Poetry digital images and Asemic Poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals.

Jeri Onitskansky’s poems have appeared in a number of publications including Ambit, Long Poem Magazine, Magma, PN Review, The Rialto and The Poetry Review. She won first prize in the 2012 Ledbury competition, second prize in the 2012 Barnet Open Poetry Competition and was commended in the 2009 Geoffrey Dearmer, the 2013 Stanza and the 2017 Poetry on the Lake competitions. Her pamphlet Call them Juneberries was an IOTA shot winner and was published by Templar Poetry in 2015. Her pamphlet manuscript A Lone Poem was commended in the 2018 Magma Pamphlet Competition.

Stuart Pickford is the recipient of an Eric Gregory award. His first collection, The Basics, was published by Redbeck Press (2002) and shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection prize. His second collection, Swimming with Jellyfish (2016), was published by smith|doorstop. Stuart lives in Harrogate and teaches in a local comprehensive school

Lisa Reily is a former literacy consultant, dance director and teacher from Australia. Her poetry and stories have been published in several journals, such as Panoply, Amaryllis, Riggwelter, River Teeth Journal (Beautiful Things), and Magma.Lisa is currently a full-time budget traveller. You can find out more at lisareily.wordpress.com

Kerrin Sharpe has published four collections of poetry (all with Victoria University Press). Kerrin has also had her poems published in a wide range of journals both in New Zealand and overseas including Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet Press UK) and Poetry (USA).

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Amsterdam Quarterly, Australian Poetry Journal, Critical Survey, Live Encounters, Poetry New Zealand, Southerly, & Two-Thirds North. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.

Jock Stein is a piper and preacher from East Lothian. He brings to his poetry experience of the Sheffield steel industry, life in East Africa, directing a conference centre, a sabbatical in Hungary, andthe politics of Scotland today. He writes poetry in many styles, serious and quirky, convenes Tyne and Esk Writers and chairs the Scottish Church Theology Society. Currently he is engaged in researchat Glasgow University on the Psalms.

Thomas Tyrrell has a PhD in English Literature from Cardiff University. He is a two-time winner of the Terry Hetherington poetry award, and his writing has appeared in Spectral Realms, Picaroon, Wales Arts Review, isacoustic, Lonesome October, The Road Less Travelled, Three Drops From A Cauldron and Words for the Wild.

Jim C Wilson lives in East Lothian. His writing has been widely published for over 35 years. His most recent poetry collection is Come Close And Listen (Greenwich Exchange). He was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow for six years and has taught his Poetry in Practice classes at Edinburgh University since 1994. More information at: www.jimcwilson.com

By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • new poetry, poetry, year 2019 1 • Tags: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, poetry

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